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Horror! My journey from frightened child to hardened gorehound
by Patrick Vogt
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: gruesomeness alone won’t cut it
16.4.2026
Translation: Katherine Martin
A reinvention of mummy horror. That’s what director Lee Cronin’s promising with the latest film he’s attempting to terrify us with. I guess I’d better grab my embalming fluid.
Fear not, this review contains zero spoilers. Everything mentioned here has already been revealed in trailers. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy has been in theatres since 16 April.
No, my colleague Luca isn’t a scaredy-cat. Of course he isn’t! Horror films just aren’t his thing. With this in mind, he’s tempted to skip the press screening of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. Especially given how hard the trailer goes.
Before Luca has to agonise over his decision any longer, I make the choice for him and watch the film. After all, horror and I are old friends.
What’s Lee Cronin’s The Mummy about?
Seeing as you could fit the plot onto the back of a beer mat and, as I mentioned earlier, I don’t want to give anything away, I’ll just stick to the film’s official press release:
«The young daughter of a journalist disappears into the desert without a trace.
Eight years later, the broken family is shocked when she’s returned to them, as what should be a joyful reunion turns into a living nightmare.»
This mummy isn’t going to wrap me around her little finger
Horror films are currently surging in popularity. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners starring Michael B. Jordan won four Oscars. Bagging 16 nominations in the lead-up to the ceremony, it set a new record. Weapons, Together and Bring Her Back hit the silver screen in 2025 too, garnering positive or very positive acclaim from both audiences and critics.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is clearly attempting to ride this wave… and has ended up falling flat on its face. Why? As it turns out, there’s quite an array of factors to blame.
Trailer
First of all, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is a classic example of a trailer trap. The trailer’s quite something – I have to agree with my colleague Luca there. However, it raises expectations that the film fails to meet. While it scared Luca, it left me anticipating a decent horror flick. Welp. Having seen the film, my suspicion that the trailer might be revealing too much was confirmed.
Length
At least the trailer’s edited in a manner fitting of a snappy preview. The film would’ve benefitted from taking a big old leaf out of that book. At 133 minutes long, however, it demands real staying power.
I like slow burners, but Lee Cronin’s The Mummy doesn’t fall into that category. Yes, the film dedicates a fair bit of time to exposition. But it gets bogged down in unnecessarily long, supposedly meaningful subplots, only to completely spiral out of control in the final half-hour, collapsing under the weight of all the elements it hints at.
Without all the unnecessary to-ing and fro-ing, the story could be told in 90 minutes and it wouldn’t do the film any harm – quite the opposite, in fact!
Source: Warner Bros. Ent.
The human factor
Horror isn’t the kind of genre where the characters behave rationally. Their decisions often serve to drive the plot forward, even if they’re utterly at odds with what we’d tend to call «common sense». If a film doesn’t take itself too seriously, this is easy to forgive. However, in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, the characters practically set a new standard for making bad – or at least questionable – decisions. Several times over the course of the film, I had Klaus Kinski grumbling, «No one can be that stupid,» in my head.
«What was our daughter doing in a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus?» asks dad Charlie Cannon (Jack Reynor) at one point. Good question, Charlie. And why are you willingly opening the door to disaster, ignoring every clear warning? I’m a dad myself, and, parental love aside, I’d have handled things differently from the start – especially given the family circumstances.
While we’re on the subject, I initially don’t notice any signs of the family being «broken» following Katie’s disappearance, as the press release describes. It’s only once Katie returns that their demons and rifts gradually come to light. There are subtle hints at the themes of guilt and atonement. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy doesn’t hold up as a metaphor. That’d be reading too much into a film that only scratches the surface.
Source: Warner Bros. Ent.
Eugh, you creepy thing!
This isn’t the first time Lee Cronin has taken on a film with a cultish feel to it. In 2023, he directed Evil Dead Rise – something that’s clearly evident when you watch Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. The Evil Dead vibe is ever-present, mixing in with a healthy dose of The Exorcist. And as promising as that combination may sound, it crashes and burns as a result of its failure to generate anything original. These major influences loom large, taking up so much room that Lee Cronin’s distinctive style is rendered imperceptible. Which is a shame.
As a horror film, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is obviously trying to be suspenseful and scary. That effort’s certainly apparent, at least on the auditory front. The sound effects are the best part of the whole film. There’s cracking, ominous rumbling and scurrying galore. Mind you, maybe it’s too much of a good thing. Almost every shot, action and gesture is accompanied by a sound effect, making them seem meaningful or even crucial. Basically, the film tries so hard to be suspenseful that it becomes tiresome. I could smell the jumpscares from a mile away.
If there’s one word that applies to Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, it’s «gross». At least in parts. Those few gory scenes also tip the film right into Evil Dead territory. I’ve got a strong stomach, so they didn’t really bother me. But they didn’t add anything substantial to the story. To be honest, one or two of the more gruesome scenes gave me the impression that the director had ended up totally losing control. It’s gross purely for the sake of being gross, hence why it’s been hit with a slew of 18-ratings (article in German). Well, I guess that’s one way to make a film.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy provides zero room for the slightly old-fashioned, spooky charm of the Universal Mummy films from the 1930s or of Hammer Films’ versions a few decades later. There’s no trace of the lightheartedness and humour present in The Mummy series starring Brendan Fraser either.
Source: Warner Bros. Ent.
In a nutshell
An overambitious mummy horror
The official press release for Lee Cronin’s The Mummy describes it as «an audacious and twisted retelling» of one of the most famous horror stories of all time. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, the film plays it too safe with its horror elements, instead churning out one genre cliché after another without striking the right chord. As a result, the mummy mysticism goes out of the window.
In addition to directing the film, Lee Cronin wrote the screenplay. He’s shot for the moon – but because he hasn’t dared to step out of the shadow of his famous influences, he’s fallen short. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is run-of-the-mill fare. Explicit, but harmless. Too bad.
Header image: Warner Bros. Ent.
I'm a full-blooded dad and husband, part-time nerd and chicken farmer, cat tamer and animal lover. I would like to know everything and yet I know nothing. I know even less, but I learn something new every day. What I am good at is dealing with words, spoken and written. And I get to prove that here.
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